Michael: Monday, April 6, 2015

My arch enemy,
The squirrel, waiting to pounce,
Lives just out of reach.

Outside of this blog, I don’t participate in any other form of social media, though Kimme is urging me to join Facebook.

Why is she nudging me in that direction and why have I pushed back so far?
Both of us are basically shy, quiet people. The only people I saw on a regular basis in the states were family, one friend, and devout members of our trail club and Toastmasters. Through email I kept in contact with a few others.  Kimme, being a woman and a better friend than I, had a slightly more extensive social network. We both are not great multi-taskers, so working, going to school, taking care of our chores and spending some time together didn’t leave us with much time nor energy to engage with other people.

But here in Panama, outside of email, all we have is each other. Not that we’re getting sick and tired of each other, but we both feel that as part of our journey here we should make an effort to reach out to both those we care about or wanted to know better back in the states, and some of the more like minded people we have met here. Here, we’ve decided to engage in at least one social activity a week.

But to reach out to people back in the states that we’d like to maintain or initiate contact with, Kimme suggests that I go on Facebook and at least let people know about our blog. And then if we spark the kindling of some old friendships or create a few new ones, we can always go to an email or phone relationship, which feels more comfortable to us. 

I’ve been reluctant to go that route for a few reasons. Like I said before, time and energy are limited. Also, since I haven’t engaged in Facebook or any other similar app or network, I don’t know how they work and there are certain new things I just don’t feel like taking up because I know I’ll feel clumsy at it. There’s also a sense of voyeurism that I don’t feel comfortable with, and on the flip side, I have a strong sense of privacy that I’m worried I may slowly allow to erode. I’m also worried that no one will “friend” or “like” or “tweet” or “lick” or whatever people are doing to indicate that they find you worthwhile or interesting.

But in the end I’ll probably roll the dice soon enough and take my chances that I’ll be fortunate enough to find a few old or new people out there that I may be fortunate enough to strike up a friendship with. I do believe, for me at least, I couldn’t feel productive while having too many good friends, but right now I don’t.